So, I really like cooking videos. And I think the idea of doing a search for a thing that I enjoyed in a restaurant and might enjoy making at home is kinda neat. But I keep seeing videos from various youtube cooking personalities with taglines like 'popular chain restaurant dish but cheaper'; and I have some thoughts about that.
It is the sort of line that gets the clicks, and muchly those youtubers are making vids to make a living. So I get why that'd go for that. Also people just don't have the money to go out all the time, so for those seeking the content I'd say it also makes sense. Even so, I feel like boiling down the cost of making a dish to just the cost of the ingredients belies the other costs: upkeep for the kitchen (utensils, appliances, etc.), energy required for cooking (the power bill), and most importantly the labor put into making the dish.
Granting that in our capitalist world most of the up charge beyond the cost of ingredients goes to pay overhead while the people doing the actual labor of making the food are left with only a small fraction of the value of their labor; the labor of the people who make us food has intrinsic value by virtue of it being labor performed by a person. That in particular is something I feel we need to keep in mind to avoid devaluing.
In a sense, I'd say rather than cooking at home being strictly speaking cheaper by virtue of exchanging less monetary currency for it, doing the labor personally invests a mix of personal time, energy, and the monetary cost of purchasing ingredients. Because a person at home cooking for themselves or other is also performing labor that takes time and energy and has value. Capitalist society just doesn't put a monetary value on that labor which isn't directly exploited for company profits (Sometimes called 'Reproductive Labor'). So in that sense the mix of what is being exchanged (currency vs currency+time+energy) by the person who wants the dish to obtain the completed dish changes while the end value of the dish itself, the enjoyment and nutritional content, is similar.
Ok, end ramble. With important note because oft it's needed: again, the people using these taglines are doing so for reasons that do make sense for what they're doing. This is just me pushing out some thoughts in the hopes of getting other people thinking about some important concepts.